The invention relates to a new strain of Penicillium that can be used in bioremediation and to degrade toxic compounds.
Bioremediation is the use of organisms, such as fungi, bacteria, or plants, to degrade pollutants, e.g., in soil, water, or the air. Several fungi are known that degrade organic pollutants. For example, Phanerochaete chrysosporium strain BKM-F-1767, Trametes spp., and Bjerkandera adusta are known to degrade polycyclic hydrocarbons, including fluorene and benzoa!pyrene, and have been investigated for possible use in the bioremediation of contaminated soil and water. In addition, strains of Pseudomonas spp., Alcaligenes spp., Acinetobacter spp., and Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus that were isolated from marine sediments contaminated by petroleum were found to degrade Arabian Light crude oil (LaCotte et al., Chemosphere, 31:4351, 1995). Pseudomonas spp. and Bacillus spp. can degrade organochlorine pesticides such as DDT, dieldrin, and eldrin (Patil et al., Appl. Microbiol., 19:879, 1970). Trichoderma harzianum is known to degrade DDT, dieldrin, endosulfan, and also pentachlorophenol and pentachloronitrobenzene (Katayama and Matsumura, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 12:1059, 1993). Trichoderma also produces peroxidases, and two families of this enzyme have been shown to initiate sulfonated azo dye degradation (Chivikula et al., Biochemistry, 34:7765, 1995) and oxidation of polycyclic hydrocarbons in vitro (Haemmerli et al., J. Biol. Chem., 261:6900, 1986).
One family of organic pollutants includes the synthetic dyes that are used for textile dyeing, paper printing, color photography, and other industrial applications. Major classes of these synthetic dyes include anthraquinone, azo, and triarylmethane dyes, with azo dyes constituting more than 50% of those used in industrial applications. Many of these dyes are toxic, and discharge of these dye effluents causes serious environmental pollution. Over 0.7 million tons of synthetic dyes are produced annually worldwide, and it is estimated that 10-15% of the dyes are lost in the effluent during use in dyeing processes (Nigam et al., Process Biochem. 31:435, 1996). In mammals, the azo linkages are reduced by the intestinal microflora to generate aromatic amines, some of which are potentially carcinogenic (Chivikula et al., Biochemistry 34:7765, 1995).